The 4 primary seasons.

What are warm and cool skintones?

Every skintone sits somewhere on a single axis: warm or cool. It isn't about how light or dark your skin is — a porcelain face and a deep brown face can share the same temperature. What matters is the undertone: the quiet pigment that sits below the surface and catches the light.

Warm skin has yellow, golden or peachy undertones. It tends to glow under candlelight, look harmonious next to gold jewellery, and read “sun-touched” even in winter. Spring and Autumn live here.

Cool skin has blue, pink or rosy undertones. It looks luminous next to silver, platinum or white gold, and often carries a faint flush at the cheek. Summer and Winter live here.

What are primaries? Your skintone.

In a colour analysis, your primary feature is the one that carries the most visual weight — and for almost everyone, that is the skin. Skin covers the largest surface, sits closest to whatever you wear, and reacts most visibly to colour. Get the skin right and the rest follows.

We read three things in the skin: its undertone (warm or cool), its value (light to deep) and its chroma (clear and bright versus soft and muted). Those three readings already point firmly toward one of the four seasons — long before we look at anything else.

Secondaries — hair, eyes, lips & lashes.

Once the skintone is read, the secondaries confirm the season. Hair, eyes, lashes and lips each carry their own pigment, and together they sharpen the picture. A warm Spring and a warm Autumn might both have golden skin — but Spring's clear blue eyes and strawberry-blonde hair tell a different story to Autumn's amber eyes and copper hair.

The four seasonal palettes.

Each season has a palette that echoes its natural colouring — the same temperature, the same value range, the same chroma. When you wear from your palette, your face is the brightest thing in the frame. Wear from another season, and the clothes start to look louder than the person inside them.

Four season physical characteristics.

These reference charts show what each season can look like across different ethnicities and ages. Notice how within a single season the people may look outwardly very different, yet share the same underlying temperature, contrast and clarity. We group them by skintone temperature — cool first, then warm.

Cool skin

Summer & Winter

Blue, pink or rosy undertones. Skin sings next to silver, jewel tones and clear, cool colour.

Warm skin

Spring & Autumn

Yellow, golden or peachy undertones. Skin glows next to gold, earth tones and warm, sun-touched colour.